Pratapaditya

Three contemporary sources remain — letters of Portuguese Jesuit priests collated in Histoire des lndes Orientales by Father Du Jarric; Baharistan-i-Ghaibi, a history of Bengal by Mirza Nathan; and, travelogues of Abdul Latif.[1][3]

For about the first decade, Pratapaditya likely ruled in a dyarchy with Basanta Ray.[1] It is believed that c. 1598 - 1600, Pratapaditya had his uncle murdered with support from the Portuguese and ascended to the throne.[1] In return, he allowed the Portuguese Missionaries to settle in his territories; the first Church in Bengal was opened at Dhumghat c. 1600.[1]

His rule over Jessore coincided with multiple foreign powers — the Portuguese, the Arakanese, and the Mughals — vying for the control of the Bengal delta and entering into fragile alliances with local rulers.[1] In 1602, Dominique Carvalho, a Portuguese war-master in service of Kedar Ray, had occupied the salt-rich port of Sandip which had been seized by the Mughals from the Rays, two years before.[1] However, the inhabitants did not take kindly to Carvalho and rebelled; soon, multiple parties — the Arakans, who helped Carvalho to subdue the rebellion; the Portuguese, who constructed a fort without consent of the Arkakans; the Rays, who felt usurped by the Portuguese; the Mughals, who wished to expand into the East — found themselves embroiled in a regional conflict that spanned for a couple of years.[1] In the end, the Mughals having killed Ray and the Arakans having chased the Portuguese out made the most significant gains.[1]

Pratapaditya appears to have attempted in leveraging this multipolarity to his advantage.[1] In 1605, he invited Carvalho to his kingdom only to have him arrested.[1] Du Jarric accuses Pratapadiya of having entered into a secret treaty with the Arakans to save his own territory; Aniruddha Ray speculates that pleasing the Mughals, who were on the ascendancy, might have been an additional factor.[1] Carvalho's arrest empowered the local Afghans to loot and massacre the Portuguese the same night; even the church was not spared.[1] The next day, Pratapaditya destroyed Carvalho's fleet, arrested the surviving Portuguese, and confiscated all of their properties; after a summary trial, four were put to death and a ransom of eleven thousand rupees was fixed for the rest.[1]

The initial reluctance from the Portuguese to pay the ransom caused consternation in local Hindus who raided the church suspecting the missionaries of Machiavellian tactics.[1] Eventually, once the ransom was paid, Pratapaditya had the Portuguese as well as the Missionaries leave Jessore permanently.[1] However, by 1612 they were again parts of Jessore army and must have entered into a truce sometime in-between.[1]

In 1609, Islam Khan was appointed as the Subehdar of Bengal.[1] Pratap sent his son Sangramaditya to greet Khan, who was inducted into imperial service; it was suggested that Pratap follow suit.[1] In 1609, Pratap met Khan with fifty thousand rupees and other presents, accepting Mughal vassalage and promising military assistance in subduing Musa Khan and other Zamindars in the region.[1][3] The deals was struck at a time when the Mughals were fighting multiple forces in Bengal and in a desperate need for allies.[1] By 1612, most of the rebel Zamindars were subdued and Mughal ascendancy in the region was established.[1] However, citing that Pratap did not help the Mughals in their expeditions, Islam Khan decided to seize Jessore alongside adjacent Bakla; Ray hypothesizes that the Mughals were trying to control the entire span of Hooghly — whose hinterlands were vital from an economic as well as a military perspective — and hence, scoped for opportunities.[3][1] Pratapaditya requested for a pardon and dispatched 80 war-boats under Sangramaditya but in vain; Sangramaditya was captured, and the fleet destroyed.[1][3]

This encounter led Pratapaditya to start preparing for the inevitable.[1] Udayaditya along with the majority of his force was sent away to take a defensive stance on the banks of one Salka river, north of the capital, where a fort was rapidly constructed; a well-equipped navy was put under the command of Khwaja Kamal while the infantry unit was put under Jamal Khan.[1] Despite strategically sound warfare on Udayaditya's part, the face-off ended in a devastating defeat — he, alongside Jamal Khan, barely escaped to Jessore where the rear-guard was being mounted.[1][3] The Mughals continued in their advance and camped at Buranhatty, not far from Jessore.[3] Soon enough, Bakla fell.[1] With Jessore being opened up from all sides, Paratapaditya left for the Mughal camp to offer his submission.[1] However, for reasons unknown, he ditched the plan and the conflict continued.[1] Pratapaditya took, what would be his last stand, about 5 miles north of his capital, in a makeshift fort.[1][3] The defence hold for days before felling to a sudden attack, forcing him to retreat to Jessore and concede defeat.[1][3]

Paratapaditya was treated with respect and taken as a war-prisoner to Dhaka, where Islam Khan had him imprisoned along with his sons.[1] Whereas his sons were released soon, what happened to Pratapaditya is not known; his territory was distributed as jagirs.[1]

The earliest extant mention of Pratapaditya in vernacular literature is Annada Mangal, a mid-18th c. historical epic by Raygunakar Bharatchandra.[1] Pratap was a hero, blessed by Kali but vanity and pride hastened his end.[1] This would influence the first historical prose on the subject by Ramram Basu — Pratapaditya Charita.[1] Written as a historical romance novel c. 1800, Basu claimed to be among the heirs of Pratapaditya and used family letters and a Persian manuscript among sources.[1] Both of these works significantly influenced the production of future literature on Pratapaditya; notably, it was caste that played a defining role in the rise and fall of Pratapaditya in these narratives, and communalism was largely absent.[1]

In 1856, Harish Chandra Tarkalankar published The History of Raja Pratapaditya: "The Last King of Sagar lsland", a modernized retelling of Basu's novel.[1] Soon, the British administrators would start taking a keen interest in local history and naturally, Pratapaditya.[1] In 1857, Smyth was the first colonial official to chronicle our subject — he came upon certain ruins in Sunderban, which local legends had attributed to Pratapaditya.[1] 11 years later, Rainey read a paper on Pratapaditya in The Asiatic Society: the contents were borrowed from Tarkalankar's work and Pratapaditya was a hero.[1] The first critical evaluation came in 1874 in Westland's Report of the District of Jessore — in the words of Ray, it was an attempt to "cut Pratap's heroism to size".[1] The same year, were published, three "pioneering essays" by Blochman.[1]

By mid-1870s, Pratapaditya was no longer a unanimous hero — the colonial administration was pushing back against panegyrics.[1] Beveridge's report in 1876 portrayed him to be a "cruel monster" for murdering Carvalho.[1] Falkner deemed him to be an adventurer, not worth more than a footnote.[1]